1970's
This decade marks a period of profound personal and political transformation for Robert Slingsby. It begins with the final years of his schooling in South Africa, where the eruption of the 1976 Soweto Uprising and the broader wave of anti-Apartheid resistance deeply challenged his sense of place and purpose. Rejecting the path of state-sanctioned education and shaped by the experience of mandatory conscription, Slingsby made the radical decision to study abroad at the Vrije Akademie in The Hague. There, immersed in a radically different cultural and artistic landscape, he began forging the visual language that would define his life's work. These early years reflect a series of bold departures, from the military to the studio, from oppression to expression, all unfolding against the backdrop of a society in the violent throes of Apartheid’s disintegration.
1979
Architects of apartheid
Oil on canvas
160 x 140 cm
"Using the cow as the metaphor it showed how the apartheid 'machine' led to the division of black and white. The ‘ballmen’ symbolize my feeling of having to appear eternally optimistic while inside I felt the shame of a gluttonous Buddha. The compartmentalization and colour within the ‘ballmen’ are alienated from their natural surrounding. The gold cow-dung was the, an illustration of the deception of the ill gotten gains, the fruits of the apartheid myth."
1978
African horizons
Oil on canvas
55 x 65 cm​​
1977
Whites only
Oil on canvas
80 x 96 cm​
"
At 20, I headed for Holland. The 1976 education riots in South Africa represented an indefensible conflict of conscience to attend a South African university, and motivated my decision to make the necessary sacrifices to further my art education elsewhere.
Amongst the tumult of this period emerged shifts of consciousness globally. As a South African, it was all about politics, exposing the brutality of the abhorrent Apartheid regime.​ My art reflected this. I have very few images or paintings from this period. These reflect a 22 year old me in my Den Haag studio, and ‘Whites only’, an oil on canvas, I painted and exhibited, at that time."
Robert Slingsby
